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JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

blog.jupyter.org

41–50 of 119 posts

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#41
post #5

> JupyterLab adapts easily to multiple workflow needs, letting you move from a Notebook/narrative focus to a script/console one. I'm not sure I like where that design is going. It's starting to look an awful lot like RStudio and Matlab and I moved away from those tools for a reason. My favourite thing about Jupyter is that it is focused on notebooks and narrative. It brought about a revolution of sorts; now we have p…

Notebook is still primary interface for final version of your analysis. But during iteration and experimentation of analysis, the other parts of jupyterlab are really helpful! Before all of these was not so nicely integrated.

But from what I can tell, it still doesn't look integrated. It looks like separate tools all glued on the same webpage.

Now I have yet a separate terminal, a separate file manager, a separate Python REPL, ... How is this any better than just keeping those applications open and switching between them?

I really hope this isn't just a poorly-implemented window manager inside a web browser.

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#42
post #40

I like the idea of executable cells for developing. It's been a couple of years since I played around with Jupyter notebooks, but then I got frustrated quite soon: Stepping outside my preferred editor (vim) was annoying, likewise I had no idea if (how?) I could export the code out of notebook to a regular .py text file (without clumsily copypasting each cell). And the .ipynb files itself seem quite terrible to manage…

There's a one-line terminal command to convert to. It's like `jupyter nbconvert -o python` or something. Works okay out of the box, and has some meager customizability.

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#43
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notebook is still primary interface for final version of your analysis. But during iteration and experimentation of analysis, the other parts of jupyterlab are really helpful! Before all of these was not so nicely integrated.

But from what I can tell, it still doesn't look integrated. It looks like separate tools all glued on the same webpage. Now I have yet a separate terminal, a separate file manager, a separate Python REPL, ... How is this any better than just keeping those applications open and switching between them? I really hope this isn't just a poorly-implemented window manager inside a web browser.

For some plugins integration just means visual integration (i.e. window-manager integration). And, to be clear, this one is not poorly-implemented. It's based on a very powerful web-application toolkit called PhosphorJS written by very experienced UI developers.

For other plugins there is very nice integration so that you can have interactions in one plugin update outputs in another and vice-versa.

The ease of creating a connected ecosystem of web-applications connected to your workflow is one of the powerful aspects of the new platform.

What would great integration look like to you?

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#44
post #40

I like the idea of executable cells for developing. It's been a couple of years since I played around with Jupyter notebooks, but then I got frustrated quite soon: Stepping outside my preferred editor (vim) was annoying, likewise I had no idea if (how?) I could export the code out of notebook to a regular .py text file (without clumsily copypasting each cell). And the .ipynb files itself seem quite terrible to manage…

Notebook provides keyboard shortcuts also accessible and searchable from command palette. There is also ipymd to write notebook from your editor using markdown. Pycharm supports notebooks and maybe you can use IdeaVim? You can export notebook to .py file from file menu. For git, just don't save the output, which can be removed from cells menu. See ipywidgets repo for notebook examples without outputs.

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#45
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notebook is still primary interface for final version of your analysis. But during iteration and experimentation of analysis, the other parts of jupyterlab are really helpful! Before all of these was not so nicely integrated.

But from what I can tell, it still doesn't look integrated. It looks like separate tools all glued on the same webpage. Now I have yet a separate terminal, a separate file manager, a separate Python REPL, ... How is this any better than just keeping those applications open and switching between them? I really hope this isn't just a poorly-implemented window manager inside a web browser.

The layout is customizable - you keep what is needed

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#46
post #8
post #6

I love Jupyter notebooks, I just wish I could use them in a dedicated program instead of having to run a server and using a browser based client. It feels hacky and I just prefer native apps for coding and the browser for reading documentation and similar. Even an Electron based program that could be associated with notebook files and hide the server-client model would make it nicer to use. At the moment I like to op…

You should check this https://github.com/nteract/hydrogen/blob/master/README.md out.

[deleted]

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#47
post #6

I love Jupyter notebooks, I just wish I could use them in a dedicated program instead of having to run a server and using a browser based client. It feels hacky and I just prefer native apps for coding and the browser for reading documentation and similar. Even an Electron based program that could be associated with notebook files and hide the server-client model would make it nicer to use. At the moment I like to op…

There's also an emacs extension that allows it to work with Jupyter

http://millejoh.github.io/emacs-ipython-notebook/

(I personally haven't used it.)

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#48
post #2

So RStudio in a browser? Jokes aside, this looks great. The biggest frustration I've had with the notebooks is the organization of code. Nice to see that become a bit more compartmentalized from the execution window.

RStudio is always in a browser...

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#49
post #5

> JupyterLab adapts easily to multiple workflow needs, letting you move from a Notebook/narrative focus to a script/console one. I'm not sure I like where that design is going. It's starting to look an awful lot like RStudio and Matlab and I moved away from those tools for a reason. My favourite thing about Jupyter is that it is focused on notebooks and narrative. It brought about a revolution of sorts; now we have p…

Context: We use Jupyter heavily (mostly against Spark).

In my experience there is a set of things that "traditional" Jupyter notebooks does really well. Anytime you have a linear flow of steps the notebook metaphor works really well.

However, if you are doing things approaching traditional development, where you have multiple sources of data, or loops that require debugging, or basically anything that isn't linear in nature it doesn't work so well.

I wouldn't want to lose traditional notebooks, but I'd love to be able to offer people something like this that offers better debugging and some development tool support, rather than jumping to a full desktop IDE.

Re: JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook

#50
post #6

I love Jupyter notebooks, I just wish I could use them in a dedicated program instead of having to run a server and using a browser based client. It feels hacky and I just prefer native apps for coding and the browser for reading documentation and similar. Even an Electron based program that could be associated with notebook files and hide the server-client model would make it nicer to use. At the moment I like to op…

There's also an emacs extension that allows it to work with Jupyter http://millejoh.github.io/emacs-ipython-notebook/ (I personally haven't used it.)

I've used it. It's great when it works. But often it doesn't. That extension needs some serious tlc before it achieves its potential, which is huge.
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